Sat.May 22, 2021 - Fri.May 28, 2021

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How to Be a Productive Project Manager: 7 Tips

Project Risk Coach

Many project managers feel overwhelmed with emails, phone calls, and meetings. They often work overtime, but few feel as though they are making progress. Although we are all given the same amount of time each day, some project managers are able to produce greater value for their organizations. Some are more engaged. Imagine yourself as a more productive project manager, one with greater capacity and energy to complete each day’s tasks.

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The Best Guide To One-On-One Meetings

nTask

One-on-one meetings form a core part of a company’s administration and management. These simple and quick sessions can be an excellent way of communication within the organization. One-on-one meetings give teams an insight into the problems plaguing their projects’ process. They are also an efficient way of identifying issues and resolving them before they pose a threat to project management.

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What Is Scope Creep and How Can I Avoid It?

ProjectManager.com

Before we can explain how to avoid scope creep in your projects, we need to understand what project scope and scope creep are. What Is the Scope of a Project? In simple terms, the project scope refers to all the work that is required to complete a project. You can use a work breakdown structure to help you identify all the individual tasks, activities and deliverables of your projects.

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Master’s in Project Management vs MBA: 10 Expert Tips to Help You Decide

Rebel’s Guide to PM

Here’s the TL;DR: The MBA will give you more flexibility later in your career and should probably be the route you choose. While everyone has individual goals and it’s impossible for someone on the internet who doesn’t know your personal situation to advise you, an MBA is worth serious consideration. In this article, I’ll share 10 expert tips from a range of people about their experiences to help you choose the right higher education goals for you, so you can make the right choice for your caree

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The 2nd Generation of Innovation Management: A Survival Guide

Speaker: Chris Townsend, VP of Product Marketing, Wellspring

Over the past decade, companies have embraced innovation with enthusiasm—Chief Innovation Officers have been hired, and in-house incubators, accelerators, and co-creation labs have been launched. CEOs have spoken with passion about “making everyone an innovator” and the need “to disrupt our own business.” But after years of experimentation, senior leaders are asking: Is this still just an experiment, or are we in it for the long haul?

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Project Management Guidelines (Part 1) - What We Can Learn From Project Failures

Inloox

Projects are becoming increasingly complex. This may be due to the project itself, which is becoming more complex because of the multitude of parameters it contains. Another reason can be the influence of the project environment or a high number of stakeholders. A good project manager knows that some developments are out of their control. However, it is the way you react in such situations that can make the difference.

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Cost-Plus Contract: How to Use One

ProjectManager.com

Contracts specify the terms of the agreement between an employer and a contractor. Because these agreements are so diverse, there are many different types of contracts, each with their own benefits. One of these is called a cost-plus contract. Imagine you’re building something conceptual, but you only have a general idea of how to do so. You’ll want to hire a contractor who’s familiar with this type of job and knows the specific steps to take.

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Some helpful tips for choosing metrics

Scrum.org

In an agile context, we use metrics to set performance goals, measure current conditions, define small improvement experiments and measure the effectiveness of the experiments in order to inspect and adapt goals and determine the next steps. Metrics need to be chosen with care because when poorly chosen, they create an illusion of control. The metric data might deliver green dashboards while in reality, our organisation is not performing very well.

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Modernizing PPM: A Practical Four-Step Roadmap to Accelerate Agility

The Lazy Project Manager

Special Live Webinar with Peter Taylor – The Lazy Project Manager – and Planview. Modernizing PPM: A Practical Four-Step Roadmap to Accelerate Agility. PM Today is delighted announce that our associate editor, Amy Hatton, will be hosting a very special live Planview webinar , featuring Author, Speaker, Coach, Consultant and Trainer, Peter Taylor – AKA The Lazy Project Manager.

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How to have bigger impact by deepening your project communication

Susanne Madsen

We often say that one of the most important roles of a project manager and leader is to be able to communicate effectively. Being the hub of the project, the PM communicates with team members, stakeholders, end users and the project sponsor – all of whom have different preferences for how they would like to be communicated with. Some people prefer email and written status reports whereas others favour telephone and face-to-face interactions.

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Breaking Ground on Better Payment Processes: Strategies for Construction Pros

Speaker: Timothy Allsopp

Payment challenges often lead to delayed projects, financial bottlenecks, and strained relationships. With construction projects becoming more complex, outdated processes are no longer sustainable. By refining financial workflow, companies can improve cash flow, reduce error, and foster trust between stakeholders. Discover practical strategies for redesigning payment systems to overcome workflow challenges while creating a smoother, more reliable process for contractors and subcontractors alike.

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Cost Reimbursement Contract: A Quick Guide

ProjectManager.com

There are many ways to contract work. But when the agreement is signed, it’s legally binding. Both parties must adhere to its terms and conditions. That’s why contracts vary from fixed-price contracts, in which the quoted price is final, to others with more flexibility. For example, a fixed-price contract is only viable for the contractor when they are able to very accurately forecast how much the project will cost.

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The Frustrated Scrum Master — When all the Effort Leads Nowhere

Scrum.org

There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. One failure symptom of a botched agile transformation is the frustrated Scrum Master. Join me and explore the consequences of a Scrum Master who has thrown in the towel in 92 seconds. ?? Shall I notify you about articles like this one?

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Uncertainty in Business: Today’s Challenges in Adapting to Change

Planview

Uncertainty in business is increasing, caused by rapid change, disruptions, unknowns, and whatnots. The problem is treating uncertainty today as an anomaly – a one-off event to overcome – instead of a constant. This is the topic I covered in a recent webinar featuring guest speaker Peggy Lawless, Founder and CEO of Lawless Research. We jointly presented findings from the new Strategy Execution Benchmark research.

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Limiting Class Size to Maximize Value

Leading Agile

When the pandemic started, we had to move our CSM and CSPO training to an online format. For the certification courses, the Scrum Alliance recommends not more than 30, but for LeadingAgile’s CSM and CSPO classes, we set a target class size at 15 with a max at 18. There are a number of reasons for this: Value Delivered. In each class, we run 3 in-class retrospectives and an end-of-class survey.

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15 Modern Use Cases for Enterprise Business Intelligence

Large enterprises face unique challenges in optimizing their Business Intelligence (BI) output due to the sheer scale and complexity of their operations. Unlike smaller organizations, where basic BI features and simple dashboards might suffice, enterprises must manage vast amounts of data from diverse sources. What are the top modern BI use cases for enterprise businesses to help you get a leg up on the competition?

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How to Sequence Activities in a Project

ProjectManager.com

Everybody subconsciously creates sequence activities in their day-to-day lives. We plan weekly trips to the store, clean and tidy our homes, we run errands — the list goes on. In this way, we are all familiar with basic project management skills. When we can identify sequential activities in our day-to-day life, it’s much easier to then spot them in the context of a complex project.

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Why Scrum Requires a Failure Culture — Making Your Scrum Work #10

Scrum.org

TL; DR: Scrum Failure Culture: A Requirement to Be Successful. There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. To make things worse, a crucial success factor of every Scrum team is not even mentioned in the Scrum Guide: Any organization that wants to employ Scrum to learn faster than its competitors needs to have a solid failure culture.

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Get to Know Us Better: Frequently Asked Questions about Epicflow

Epicflow Blog

pe’ve gathered the questions that our users most frequently ask about Epicflow. Read further to find out how the system works, learn more about Epicflow’s features, find answers to the questions coming from the experience of working with Epicflow, and other important information about our product. . How Does Epicflow Work . How does Epicflow set priority between projects?

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15 Best Tips To Save Time In 2021

nTask

We often ramble about the lack of time or how we cannot get anything done in the inadequate amount of time we have. Well, guess what? We are here with the 15 best time saving tips that will help you add more hours to your day. When we say add more time, we do not mean adding an hour or two to the 24 hours of your day (that is impossible in the real world), we mean the efficient usage of these 24 hours to help you save some time whilst you complete all your tasks.

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Prepare Now: 2025s Must-Know Trends For Product And Data Leaders

Speaker: Jay Allardyce, Deepak Vittal, Terrence Sheflin, and Mahyar Ghasemali

As we look ahead to 2025, business intelligence and data analytics are set to play pivotal roles in shaping success. Organizations are already starting to face a host of transformative trends as the year comes to a close, including the integration of AI in data analytics, an increased emphasis on real-time data insights, and the growing importance of user experience in BI solutions.

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Understanding Project Management Success Criteria

ProjectManager.com

Without knowing what your project success criteria are, can you truly say your project is successful? Everyone wants their project to be successful, but few take the time to define what that means. Let’s say you’ve delivered a product or service on time and within budget—is that success? It could be, but not if it doesn’t meet stakeholder expectations.

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Diversity Is Essential for "Done" According to These Highschool Students

Scrum.org

The pandemic has stimulated me to teach Scrum outside my home in the United States. I have been fortunate to collaborate with many diverse cultures worldwide. I am also grateful to facilitate a team of very talented high-school students in my area. They implemented Scrum to build a real-world mobile application called "The Edge". The self-managed team of 5 Developers works in Sprints to deliver The Edge.

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Announcing My New Book “Beyond Agile”

Leading Answers

I am excited to announce my new book “ Beyond Agile: Achieving success with situational knowledge and skills “ is launching. It is available now from RMC in paperback or electronic form here. This post explains the name and motivation for the book. Future posts will profile the content.   Background. Since helping create DSDM in 1994, I have been working on agile projects for 27 years.

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How to Create and Customize Filters

MPUG

In MS Project, filtering is a way to see or highlight only the task or resource information that meets the criteria you choose. Filtering does not change any underlying data but changes what data is displayed. You can use filters in two ways. Apply an AutoFilter from a column heading in a table or apply a built-in or custom filter you create to your view.

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How to Drive Cost Savings, Efficiency Gains, and Sustainability Wins with MES

Speaker: Nikhil Joshi, Founder & President of Snic Solutions

Is your manufacturing operation reaching its efficiency potential? A Manufacturing Execution System (MES) could be the game-changer, helping you reduce waste, cut costs, and lower your carbon footprint. Join Nikhil Joshi, Founder & President of Snic Solutions, in this value-packed webinar as he breaks down how MES can drive operational excellence and sustainability.

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What you Need to Know About Creating a Project Brief?

nTask

There are many elements involved in planning a project. They include creating a variety of documentation for both the team and all the stakeholders involved. One such document that is one of the first to be created and used throughout the project lifecycle is the project brief. The project brief is an important document as it outlines the entire project from the get-go.

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The most important thing you are missing about estimation

Scrum.org

In my live training, I often ask students why we estimate. The answer I usually hear is some version of. “So we know how big something is and how long it will take.” . And yes, this is important. However, there is more. In this post, I will break down the 3 purposes of an estimate. It's actually the third one that I think is most important and often missed. 3 Purposes of Estimation. #1 - Estimation helps us know that an item is small enough to bring it into a Sprint.

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How to Keep a Multi-Generational Team Collaborative, Effective, and Productive

Proofhub

There is an ongoing debate whether teams perform better if they are homogeneous or heterogeneous. And while most experts today agree that diverse teams will perform better than less diverse ones, the fact remains that they come with their unique set of challenges. When discussing the various categories that can make a team heterogenous, the age of the team members is rarely the first thing that comes to mind.

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10 Strategies to Manage Multiple Projects at Once

LiquidPlanner

Part of my job is to juggle. Have you ever felt that way? Because I work at a planning intelligence company, I get to let our software manage a good deal of my workplace chaos. But each workplace has its own special form of randomization, and I find myself split between tasks like every other working person. It’s even more important to learn to juggle projects when you split your time between strategy and tactics.

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Navigating Chaos in Project Management

This text offers practical guidance for project managers navigating diverse frameworks. It covers topics like centralized reporting, standardized metrics, communication, training, risk management, and alignment reviews. By implementing these strategies, project managers can improve efficiency and achieve their project goals.